Why has Obama abandoned his Guantanamo pledge?

By Polly Rossdale, special for CNN

Updated 2:22 PM ET, Thu April 18, 2013

Photos: Inside Guantanamo Bay23 photos

Inside Guantanamo Bay – President Barack Obama signed an executive order on January 22, 2009, to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year. Nearly six years later, the prison for terrorism suspects remains open. Click through for a look inside the controversial facility. Here, President George W. Bush's official picture is replaced by Obama's in the lobby of the headquarters of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo on January 20, 2009, the day the latter was sworn in as president.

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Photos: Inside Guantanamo Bay23 photos

Inside Guantanamo Bay – The U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay has held terror suspects since January 2002. Early in the war on terror, the Bush administration argued these detainees were "enemy combatants" who didn't have the protections accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Here, a detainee stands at an interior fence at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A Navy sailor surveys the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009. In December 2013, Congress passed a defense spending bill that makes it easier to transfer detainees out of the facility.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – U.S. military guards move a detainee inside the detention center in September 2010. At its peak, the detainee population exceeded 750 men at Guantanamo.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A military doctor holds a feeding tube used to feed detainees on a hunger strike at a Camp Delta hospital at Guantanamo in June 2013. In March 2013, the U.S. military announced that dozens of detainees had begun a hunger strike. By that June, more than 100 detainees were on a hunger strike, and more than 40 were being force-fed, military officials said.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – Muslim detainees kneel during early morning prayers in October 2009. Cells are marked with an arrow pointing in the direction of Mecca, regarded as Islam's holy city.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A soldier stands near a placard on the fence line of the detention facility in January 2012.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A Quran sits among a display of items isssued to detainees in September 2010. The suspects are given a prayer mat and a copy of the Muslim holy book as well as a toothbrush, soap, shampoo and clothing.

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Photos: Inside Guantanamo Bay – A U.S. military guard walks out of the maximum security section of the detention center in September 2010.

Inside Guantanamo Bay – A seat and shackle await a detainee in the DVD room of the maximum security Camp 5 detention center in March 2010.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – U.S. Marines join in martial arts training at the U.S. naval base in September 2010.

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Photos: Inside Guantanamo Bay – Members of the military walk the hallway of Cell Block C in the Camp 5 detention facility in January 2012.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – Guards move a detainee from his cell in Cell Block A of the Camp 6 detention facility in January 2012.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A detainee waits for lunch in September 2010. The cost of building Guantanamo's high-security detention facilities was reportedly about $54 million.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – Marines get an early-morning workout at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in October 2009.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A bus carries military guards from their night shift at the detention center in September 2010.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A military guard puts on gloves before moving a detainee within the detention center in September 2010.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – Members of the U.S. Navy move down the hallway of Cell Block C in the Camp 5 detention facility in January 2012.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – A U.S. military guard holds shackles before preparing to move a detainee in September 2010.

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Inside Guantanamo Bay – An American flag flies over Camp 6 at Guantanamo in June 2013.

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Story highlights

U.S. President Barack Obama promised in 2008 to close Guantanamo Bay

Reprieve: It has taken three years to realize he missed his self-imposed deadline

U.S. admits more than 50 of 166 detainees in camp are on hunger strike - media reports

European parliament is debating the hunger strikes at the camp

U.S. President Barack Obama failed to keep his 2008 election promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp at a U.S. naval base in Cuba because the world had stopped watching. Europeans, delighted at his election and pledge to abandon Bush-era torture practices that had sullied the U.S. reputation worldwide, assumed that he would do what he said was going to do. It has taken three years to realise that he missed his self-imposed deadline.

For many that realization has been brought about by the Guantanamo detainees themselves, who unable to voice their despair in any other way are now on hunger strike in large numbers. Even the U.S. military now admits that more than 50 of the 166 detainees in the camp are now involved. In reality, the number is much higher: Reprieve understands, through unclassified phone calls with our clients, that more than 130 are now on hunger strike.

These include men with close ties to Europe: Shaker Aamer is a Londoner, a UK resident with a British wife and four British kids living in the capital. He has been cleared for release twice -- by both the Bush and Obama administrations. Successive British governments have called for him to be returned home. Yet he is still in Guantanamo, more than a decade on from being taken into U.S. custody. A fortnight ago, he told his lawyer, Reprieve's Clive Stafford Smith, that he had joined the hunger strike and had already lost over 30 pounds in weight. "I can't read. I am dizzy and I fall down all the time," he said, adding "My back and my neck are getting worse day by day. I don't want the end of this torture here to be paralyzed. I want to carry my kids when I get home."

Polly Rossdale

Nabil Hadjarab's father and grandfather both fought for the French army. He longs to return to his family in France -- his uncle, Ahmad Hadjarab, has said: "I am asking America for humanity, and asking France for gratitude." But so far Nabil has had neither -- he has now lost so much weight that he is being force-fed by Guantanamo personnel, strapped to a chair while a tube is pushed up his nose and down his throat -- an intensely painful process that has been described by the World Medical Association as inhuman and degrading treatment. Nabil has been cleared for release since 2007 -- yet over five years on from U.S. authorities deciding that he is no threat to anyone, he still languishes in Guantanamo. On Wednesday night on an unclassified call with his lawyer he told her he had "lost all hope of ever being released."

Another detainee, Younus Chekkouri hopes one day to be reunited with his family in Germany. He too has joined the hunger strike. On a recent unclassified call, he told Reprieve: "The nightmare has started again. For some time, things had got a bit better here ...but now it has changed again ... really, now it is just pain everywhere. I don't want to die in Guantanamo." Like Shaker and Nabil, Younus has never been given a trial or charged with any crime, and has been cleared for release by the U.S. authorities.

There are many more in Guantanamo like these men -- stuck in a limbo with no apparent end, adrift from even the most basic principles of the rule of law. The hope which rose on the election of President Obama, who promised to close Guantanamo, now seems like a cruel joke. It is easy to understand the desperation they must feel: as Shaker himself put it recently, "a little over 50% of the prisoners have been told they can go home -- or go somewhere -- but [they] are still here."

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On Thursday the European Parliament tabled an urgent hearing on the hunger strike in Guantanamo. The debate is welcome. It is crucial that Europe realises that this is not just a U.S. issue -- it is our problem as well. European intelligence services worked closely with the U.S. in implementing the misguided policies of the so-called "War on Terror" that saw so many innocent men swept up, "rendered" and tortured, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Europe has tolerated for too long the U.S. departure from the rule of law with regard to people who deserve the support of European governments.

It must be hoped that this debate is a first step towards remedying this. There is much to welcome in the motion: a call for Europe to re-engage, to demand the closure of Guantanamo, and, crucially, to offer to resettle the dozen or so prisoners who have been cleared for release but cannot go home because of the risk of torture. If Europe follows through on this, there will still be hope that one day soon, men like Shaker, Nabil and Younous will be reunited with their families.